Encyclopedia of American Loons

The group Return America came to some attention back in 2011 when it was behind a campaign to pass an amendment to North Carolina’s constitution that would ban same-sex marriage (already barred by statute). Pastor Ron Baity is their leader. To rightwing radio host Janet Parshall he explained their motives: “I’m afraid defense is down in our country,” said Baity. That would be the defense against the one who is really behind the move toward marriage equality, Satan himself: “Right now in our economy and everything else we’re experiencing in our nation I don’t think is anything less than God trying to get our attention.”

He has other arguments as well:

- He has implied that gay people are worse than maggots.

- He has compared gay people to murderers.

- He has expressed a wish to “save” gay people so they will “quit being homos.”

- He has claimed that accepting gay people would make society “more filthy”.

- That gay people are embracing a “learned lifestyle,” regardless of what the evidence might say.

- That gay people are not “normal”, implying that being “not normal” is morally wrong.

- That gay people are promoting “perversion” in schools.

- That the LGBT community wants to use their “lifestyles” to “recruit” others toward the “urban renewal program” experienced by Sodom and Gomorrah, since gay peoples’ “pleasure in doing evil” is “the one sin in the Bible that causes God to act swiftly.”

- That gays and gay marriage are signing America's “death warrant”.

- That pedophilia and bestiality are next.

- That we were smarter when homosexuality was prosecuted.

- That, with regard to LGBT activists, “since they cannot produce they must recruit young people to their perverted, warped agenda. One cannot think of anything more nauseating, debased, lewd and immoral than recruiting precious young people into such shameful conduct.”

- That if “a generation endorses same-sex marriage, that generation will be the last generation on the face of the Earth.”

These arguments promptly won Ron Baity a top “pro-family” award from the Family Research Council, personally handed to him by Tony Perkins. The gay community is also behind the Ebola virus, though somewhat indirectly: “We are bringing the judgment of God on this nation,” Baity said. “As sure as Sodom and Gomorrah was destroyed, don’t be surprised at the plagues, don’t be surprised at the judgment of God. You think Ebola is bad now? Just wait.”

Baity doesn’t seem particularly keen on just waiting, however. In 2014 he offered his support for Mark Harris in the GOP primary to take on Democratic North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan; Harris’s views on social issues are, by the way, pretty much the same as Baity’s.

Diagnosis: “I don’t like gays, and if you disagree with me, well, I know this really big guy and am confident he’s on my side, and if you continue to disagree with me he’s gonna beat you up.” It’s a venerable type of argument, but most people stop using it at some point in their lives. Baity proudly belongs to the special type of people who didn’t.

No, not the actor Stephen Baldwin. We’ve covered him already. This Steve Baldwin is the former executive director of the Council for National Policy, a secretive but influential conservative policy group founded by Tim LaHaye and sponsored with significant sums of money by the Moonies, which consists of “a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,” who meet three times yearly behind closed doors at undisclosed locations for a confidential conference.

Baldwin himself is probably best known, if at all, for his anti-gay stance stance, which has reached almost LaBarbera-level proportions. He was for instance opposed to Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential candidacy, claiming that a President Romney would be disastrous for the country and the Republican Party because Romney was “obsessed” with gay rights as governor of Massachusetts. “His whole administration was characterized by an almost obsessive devotion to the homosexual agenda,” said Baldwin. Romney, he claimed, was involved in “gay proclamations, gay dances, gay proms, gay assemblies, gay this, gay that,” adding obliquely, “You gotta start wondering here.” Baldwin also lamented that conservative media gave Romney a free pass on the issue, and had previously asserted that Jeff Carneal, president of Human Events’ publisher, is an “avowed homosexual” who has supported pro-equality causes. Indeed, Romney’s free pass seems to be due to the fact that many of the big names of “conservative media” are closeted homosexuals secretely conspiring to implement the gay agenda. No, Baldwin really didn’t like Romney. Indeed, he also tried to accuse Romney of believing in global warming: “[Romney] holds this belief despite the growing body of evidence that global warming theory is based upon false assumptions and despite the last two winters being among the coldest in recent history,” said Baldwin.

Currently, Baldwin seems to write for Barbwire, Matt Barber’s darkly religious fundamentalist version of InfoWars, and he is the author of From Crayons to Condoms, The Ugly Truth about America’s Public Schools (with Karen Holgate), which complains about how “our classrooms have become havens for indoctrination, sexual license and failed educational fads,” in particular the homosexual agenda and anti-Christian bias.

Diagnosis: Standard wingnut conspiracy theorist and denialist. But Baldwin is actually – or has at least been – a somewhat influential figure. One to watch.

We’ve recently had a slew of fundie wingnuts, and here’s another one. Tim Ballard is an author and pseudohistorian, in particular the author of the book The Covenant: America’s Sacred and Immutable Connection to Ancient Israel. Here Ballard argues that the British and Americans are descended from the lost tribes of Israel, using as evidence his interpretation of Genesis 49:22 as a prophecy of America (as “the greatest nation of history”). The interpretation is so untenable that one almost feels a bit of pity for the author. He also claims that Jeremiah 31 predicts the gathering of the Israelites in America, which it rather clearly does not.

Ballard’s ideas are not unprecedented; they remain popular among certain Mormons and adherents of Herbert Armstrong. Indeed, it is sufficiently infamous to have received a name, British Israelism. Ballard himself is, in fact, a Mormon, though that is not much of an excuse. However, since the country that is now America was destined to be settled by the descendants of Joseph and Ephraim, there is a covenant from which America originated that entails a duty to keep the Old Testament commandments. In other words, the Constitution is really not a valid foundation for America’s legal system; the Old Testament is.

Marginal silliness, you may think. But the thing is: Ballard’s book has been treated as a reliable source by the influential pseudohistorian David Barton, whose work has been explicitly endorsed for instance by several members of Congress.

Diagnosis: An insult to bullshit. That’s rather clearly not an obstacle to becoming endorsed by wingnut people of influence.

Are you sufficiently up-to-date on JFK conspiracies? Well, then perhaps you may wish to look into how conspiracy theorists deal with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. David W. Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier, jr., had some success with their book, and later movie, The Lincoln Conspiracy) in 1977 (Sellier has since passed away), in which they imagined a grand conspiracy of bankers and speculators behind a plan to kidnap and take out Lincoln. The book was met with little praise from actual historians, primarily because it was full of bullshit.

Of course, Balsiger – who now runs Balsiger Media – didn’t end his contributions to civilization with Lincoln. His latest books carry enticing titles like The Evidence for Heaven, and Miraculous Messages(as well as Abraham Lincoln: Untold Secrets from the Grave, so yes, he is still trying to capitalize on his former success), and primarily mixes conspiracy theories, woo, pseudoscience and religious fundamentalism. He also produces TV shows and series, most notably Encounters with the Unexplained, Xtreme Mysteries, and Ancient Secrets of the Bible. His individual TV specials include “There is More to the Secret” (yeah, that Secret), “Breaking the Da Vinci Code”, “Secrets of the Bible Code Revealed”, “Bible Code: The Future and Beyond”, and “The Quest for Noah’s Ark”; you get the gist. Ancient Secrets of the Bible is a series that ostensibly “scientifically explores many of the mysterious biblical accounts thought to be myths,” which they don’t since Balsiger’s approach is not scientific in any recognizable sense.

With one Victoria A. Gardner he has also produced a bizarre “Wholistic Health-Wellness” bulletin aimed at churches, which consists primarily of crackpot advice from Joe Mercola tailored to Christians by lots of reference to the Bible, the power of prayer, and an unprofessional layout. It really is the strangest little thing.

Diagnosis: Seems to be into virtually anything as long as it has no foundation in reality. Bizarre, but probably harmless.

Matthew Baral is an ND (a “naturopathic pediatrician”, in fact) and chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, as well as a “certified” Defeat Autism Now!practitioner. DAN! practitioners are a diverse group of people encompassing homeopaths and naturopaths and what have you, and their goal is to defeat autism using the DAN! protocol, a set of “autism biomed” quackery notable for frequent occurrences of “this is not medical advice” for legal purposes in the information material, even though what they suggest are definitely medical advice. DAN! practitioners accordingly apply apparently every non-working, dangerous and idiotic tool available, from ayurvedic medicine to chelation and polarity therapy (which works with “the Human Energy Field”).

Though Baral isn’t exactly the loudest or most aggressive proponent of woo out there, he is, as mentioned, chair of the Department of Pediatrics at the Southwest College of Naturopathic Medicine, and thus at least partially responsible for quite a bit of naturopathy being administered to children. His research concerns “the correlation between heavy metal toxicity, chelation, and autism” – which is none, of course, but Baral’s “research” suggests otherwise; apparently he has published three papers on the issue, but doesn’t say where. He is also the author of the textbooks Fundamentals of Naturopathic Pediatrics (with Jared Skowron), Integrative Medicine for Children (with May Loo) and Integrative Pediatrics(with Timothy Culbert). Even more insidiously he serves as the medical director of the Hamilton Elementary School Clinic, a free pediatric clinic that provides care to the students of one of the poorest school districts in Phoenix. Since everyone knows that what poor kids deserve is snake oil and woo.

Baral is also a member of the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians. Here is a discussion of their 25^th Anniversary Convention.

Diagnosis: No, Matt Baral is not a flaming internet kook with a poorly designed webpage, and hasn’t, as far as we know, made any grand, silly claims in public. But as a promoter of pseudoscientific bullshit he is definitely in a position where he would be able to exert notable, harmful influence on the world, much more so than most all-caps internet kooks.

Certain parts of the US are crammed with these kind of people, but we’ll endeavor to cover at least a few of them. So, Clarence Barinowski is the President and founder of the Good News Network, which is “comprised of 12 radio stations and 13 radio translators/repeaters that extend throughout the southeast, covering communities in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Florida, and now, Alabama and Mississippi.” Well, Barinowski is at least a hardcore creationist. According to Barinowski “I think it is safe to say Republicans don’t have a problem with science,” by which he means that many wingnuts reject evolution. “[T]he reality is that greater and greater ‘faith’ is required in evolution to believe in its ability to accomplish what it is credited with doing,” and in Barinowski’s imagination “[t]he whole evolutionary concept of junk DNA has been wiped away by the research called ‘the ENCODE Project’.” Indeed, Barinowski seems to think that evolution is largely based on the movie Jurassic Park (whereas he himself evidently gets his information from creationist blogs), and hence that “the fact that more people are questioning evolution indicates that more people are actually reading and learning what’s happening in modern scientific research these days, instead of getting their science education from movies,” which is a … rather novel claim. And to back it up he refers to … the Discovery Institute’s pitiful petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. Perfect.

Diagnosis: Minor fish, but still a stellar and brilliant, walking and talking illustration of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

Toni Bark was once trained as an MD, but currently she practices Classic Homeopathy (which, in case you need a reminder, is premised on the falsity of all of modern science and has also been demonstrated beyond reasonable and unreasonable doubt not to have any beneficial health effects). Anything science-based she has left behind long, long ago. Bark does, however, run something called the Center for Disease Prevention and Reversal (uh huh), and through her web site she peddles a variety of crap including Essential Living Foods. She also appears to be a sometimes partner of “holistic women’s health psychiatrist” Kelly Brogan, one of the rising stars of pseudoscientific nonsense and health-related conspiracy theories at present (just chew on the phrase “holistic women’s health psychiatry” and let it feed your stereotypes).

Bark is the narrator for much of the movie “Bought” (by Jeff Hays), an insane conspiracy flick crammed with an impressive amount of misinformation and appeals to imagined persecution. Its main claim is that vaccines are ineffective and can cause autism, an idea so thoroughly debunked that it presently make its promoters seem like gravity denialists. The movie also combines vaccine denialism with GMO paranoia, but fails – predictably – to cite a single source for this discredited line of ideas either.

Diagnosis: So that’s Toni Bark for you – an anti-rational critical thinking denialist who appears to systematically go in the opposite direction of the evidence. And she’s not alone, which really is exasperating.

Ralph Barker is part of the The Christian Worldview Network and a UFO enthusiast (one wonders whether he is also the author of the obscure 1968 book Great Mysteries of the Air). Irreconcilable views of reality, you think? Well, no (disregarding the fact that UFO beliefs tend to be irreconcilable with reality), not to Ralph Barker. In his two-part series “UFOs and the Gospel of Christ” for the Worldview Weekend, he claims that although UFOs exist, various New Agers and similar people use them “to routinely attack, ridicule, or undermine Christianity. The aliens don’t seem to be threatened by Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, or any other ism. They focus their attacks on Christianity. Could this be because Christianity is the only true religion? This would be my bet.” In other words, there is a conspiracy to use UFO sightings to make Christians sound silly. Methinks Ralph Barker may have got his defense of religious fundamentalism off on the wrong foot.

Given that the existence of extraterrestrials sits poorly with the kind of literal, Biblical fundamentalism Barker espouses, who are running the UFOs? Well, “If we do allow for alien life then certain questions must follow at least from a Christian standpoint. For example, are aliens fallen beings? Do they need redemption? Did Jesus die for them? Did Jesus die for all beings, earthling and alien? Did He die just once here on earth or did He have to visit and die on each planet? All good questions.” So, not aliens: “Personally, I think they are something else. In my youth I held to the idea that they were truly alien visitors. Today, I still think they are alien visitors but not visitors from another planet. I am convinced they are visitors from another dimension, a spiritual dimension. I believe they are demons. Just think about it.” I don’t think the piece of advice at the end would make any minimally rational person arrive at the conclusion Barker wants them to arrive at.

Apparently he once broached the question of whether there was extraterrestrial life to a congregation in Texas: “As we were discussing this, a local magistrate in the congregation had a question. His question definitely caught me off guard. He wanted to know if aliens did exist, could we eat them. I think he was a hunter. What do you think? Can we eat them?”

Diagnosis: “In conclusion I submit that the evidence or lack thereof points to a satanic deception and it is working,” says Barker. But the evidence incontrovertibly points toward poor reasoning skills and a tenuous grasp on reality. Where do they find these people?

We’ve encountered the proponents of magic melanin before, and Carol Barnes is another one. The idea, if you need a reminder, is that high levels of the pigment melanin lower your THAC0 and AC, open your chakras, are “the chemical basis of the soul” and gives you a multitude of special magical abilities; and consequently, people with lower levels of melanin are considered degenerate, albino mutants. Of course, since white people are at least subconsciously aware of their deficiencies, they have instigated all sorts of nefarious conspiracies to subjugate people with higher melanin levels. As Carol Barnes puts it: “Melanin is responsible for the existence of civilization, philosophy, religion, truth, justice, and righteousness. Individuals (whites) containing low levels of Melanin will behave in a barbaric manner.”

Barnes puts the claims forward in Melanin: The Chemical Key to Black Greatness, which, according to the blurb, “is designed to familiarize the Black Human with Melanin and its importance to life, memory processes, ancient African history, sunlight, music, dancing, anti-aging, anti-cancer, religion, electromagnetism, and any other scientific and cultural parameter.” According to one Amazon reviewer, it is “a must have for any Nubians,” since “carol made it clear why being black or reddish brown, to be correct, is the resplendent and etheral and supernal force in the known universe, whenever you see black you see god, melanin is the key to unlock the secrects of the known and unknown universe, a must have for your shelf,hotep,wadu.”

Otherwise, Barnes is best known for his (yes, I’m pretty sure it is a guy) claim that cocaine is part of the racist plot because melanin and cocaine are both alkaloids and have a high affinity for each other. Barnes also claims that blacks can test positive for cocaine up to a year after use, because cocaine co-polymerizes into melanin. However, melanin is not an alkaloid and does not co-polymerize with cocaine in vivo, but hey – that’s reality, and reality is a conspiracy, apparently.

Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific rubbish. Promoting such bullshit is hardly going to help achieve equality for historically oppressed groups, and Barnes must hence be considered a moderate threat to humanity.

A.k.a. David Steele (apparently real name)

Hank Barnes is a personal injury lawyer who runs the website Barnesworld and You Bet Your Life blog (or at least used to run them – don’t know if they are still up), where he promotes HIV denialism. No, Barnes apparently doesn’t believe that HIV causes AIDS, and he thinks those who do commit the fallacy of appeal to authority, since they tend to appeal to the conclusion of scientists who know things about diseases, and the fallacy of argument ad populum because they appeal to the fact that the vast majority of scientists think that HIV causes AIDS. For the record, that’s not quite how the fallacies “appeal to authority” and “argument ad populum” work. Furthermore, Peter Duesberg is being persecuted – after all, most people think Duesberg’s conclusions are wrong and crazy and call his bullshit “bullshit”, and if that isn’t persecution, then Barnes doesn’t know. (He doesn't know.)

Nor does Barnes like peer review. “Peer review enforces state-sanctioned paradigms. Pollack (2005) likens it to a trial where the defendant judges the plaintiff. Grant review panels defending the orthodox view control the grant lifeline and can sentence a challenger to ‘no grant.’ Deprived of funds the plaintiff-challenger is forced to shut down her lab and withdraw,” says Barnes. Yes, they are all out to get the brave, maverick dissenters who deny that HIV causes AIDS by science, logic, reasoning, evidence, reality and all those other sources of bias, and like dictators refuse to give equal time and resources to thoroughly debunked fringe denialist views. In my humble experience – purely anecdotally, of course – peer reviewers tend to like novel ideas; I guess it’s the fact that they also like those ideas being backed up by evidence to support them is what really irks people like Hank Barnes.

You can see a fine example of how Barnes reads the scientific literature here. As Steele (his real name), he has apparently also been involved in some unsuccessful legal cases involving HIV denialist claims representing Duesberg (also here).

Diagnosis: Irritating denialist who has at least shown that he doesn’t understand logic, reasoning or evidence, trading them for his own definitions based on how logic, reasoning or evidence should work to support his conclusions. His impact is unknown, but HIV denialism is actually rather scary.

Tommy Barnett

Tommy Barnett is the senior pastor of Phoenix First Assembly of God (an Assemblies of God megachurch in Phoenix, Arizona), and chancellor of something called Southeastern University (Lakeland, Florida), sometimes partner of Joyce Meyer and Ted Haggard (Barnett was part of his “apostolic oversight team” after his fall), and author of multiple books. He is, in fact, a pretty influential figure on the, shall we say, more radical end of religious fundamentalism in the US.

Matthew Barnett

Barnett is, for instance, deeply involved in various strategic level spiritual warfare projects. His Master’s Commission programs, initiated in 1985 by him and Lloyd Zeigler, is now an international program for post-high school students with a curriculum in discipleship, evangelism, and spiritual warfare. In June 2008 Sarah Palin was the keynote speaker at the Master’s Commission graduation ceremony at the Wasilla Assembly of God, and the graduates were given samurai swords to “help” in the aforementioned war.

With his son Matthew he started the Los Angeles Dream Center, a Pentecostal Christian Church mission in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. There are now 130 of these Dream Centers which combine urban social services with “city transformation,” missions, and spiritual warfare – like the efforts of charming groups such as Repent Amarillo. With the New Apostolic Reformation (though somewhat more lowkey) the Dream Centers are involved in “spiritual mapping” of areas to combat demon infestations. As the one in Atlanta says: “We take teams out on to the streets of down town Atlanta to cast out demons, heal the sick, and demonstrate the power of God … We have seen many people get healed from aids and broken arms and legs restored [as well documented as Cindy Jacobs’s claims to have raised dead children in Africa, of course]. We also do outreaches at churches and schools. Our goal is to bring unity to the church through God’s power and healing. We go out at least three days a week to invade the streets with the Kingdom, while living a lifestyle that is surrendered to our King.”

Diagnosis: Barnett himself is relatively lowkey, but the extremist fundamentalism he promotes is a serious cause for concern. Dangerous.

Haunting Evidence was a television series running from 2005 to 2007 following the travels of a psychic profiler, a medium, and a paranormal investigator through the US to investigate “cold case” homicide and missing persons cases. The idea was that this team of “unconventional investigators” could shed new light on unsolved crimes, which they didn’t. The final cast consisted of “psychic profiler” Carla Baron, medium John J. Oliver, and “paranormal investigator” Patrick Burns.

Like all such TV shows, this one preyed on vulnerable and desperate families as a source for public entertainment (though it wasn’t presented as such), and instead of producing results it, once again, lent “credibility to psychics who have once again clearly and demonstrably failed to give useful information.” Even one of the families involved admitted that these frauds “feed on the emotions of people in real tragedies”, and called Carla Baron “a real fruit loop.”

Baron herself claims to have ample experience helping the police solve cases. Though when the Independent Investigative Group (IIG) looked into 14 cases where Carla Baron claimed to have assisted detectives, the police – needless to say – did not support her claims, and in most cases even the families of the victims admitted that they currently “distrust Baron who they say provided no useful insights and demanded media attention from the start” (a useful resource here). Skepdic has been loosely following her involvement in the investigations of the Ray Gricar case. And in 2011, when the family of Holly Bobo declined Baron’s offer for help, Baron wrote on her website that the family “chose not to seek her information on Holly’s death on the advice of the police,” who, Baron believes, were “terrified to hear what I might have to say” about the abduction. “This, my friends, is yet another ‘control’ tactic deployed by the infinite ‘powers-that-be’ within gov’t jurisdiction to let all of us (a.k.a., the ‘public’) know – Who’s really running the show. Let’s not let anyone steal their proverbial thunder, shall we?” At least the comment illustrates rather nicely what kind of person we’re dealing with here. Earlier in her career, Baron drew some attention for appearing on a British television show called “Dead Famous” claiming to channel the spirit of Jim Morrison, and she built her celebrity career, such as it is, as “official psychic spokeswoman for Court TV.”

“Paranormal investigator” Patrick Burns (a.k.a. “Ghostgeek”) is worth a mention as well. He is the organizer of Ghostock, a series of paranormal enthusiast events, and author of several books such as the admittedly market-savvy The Other Side: A Teen’s Guide To Ghost Hunting And The Paranormal (with his wife Marley Gibson), targeted at a particularly gullible audience. John Oliver, on the other hand, is a spiritual teacher and psychic consultant, who is “educated in the spiritual sciences of astrology, tarot as a spiritual journey of the human, and classic school feng shui,” and who arranges seminars throughout the US on “how to develop your ESP.”

Diagnosis: Carla Baron is an utterly bankrupt human being, and the others aren’t much better. These are people who shamelessly prey on people in difficult situation for fame and media attention in the most revolting manner possible.

Kevin James Barrett is a former university lecturer and conspiracy theorist. He achieved some media attention for including a section on conspiracy theories in his 2006 introductory class “Islam: Religion and Culture” at UW-Madison. The case attracted some controversy in particular since Barrett had already made a name for himself as an … enthusiastic proponent of the claim that 9/11 was an inside job in e-mails to a variety of politicians and critics. His subsequent applications for courses to teach at Madison were unsuccessful, and Barrett concluded thathe had been discriminated against for his political beliefs.

He first drew attention to himself through op-eds in the Madison Capital Times, in which he alleged that Muslims had nothing to do with the attacks: “As a Ph.D. Islamologist and Arabist I really hate to say this, but I'll say it anyway: 9/11 had nothing to do with Islam. The war on terror is as phony as the latest Osama bin Laden tape” (original article here). He also claimed that the 2005 London bombings and the 2004 Madrid bombing appear to have been committed by U.S. or Western military intelligence and not Islamic terrorists.

Barrett currently operates Truth Jihad, a website and Internet radio show, and is the founder of Muslims for 9/11 Truth, which consists primarily of a blog that attempts to refute the idea that any Muslims were behind the 9/11 attacks and slightly threatening comments about those who disagree with him, as well as a book with the somewhat self-aggrandizing title Truth Jihad: My Epic Struggle against the 9/11 Big Lie. “Slightly threatening comments” includes his claims, first, that Fox News employees should be hung, then that the producers of United 93 should be tried for inciting war crimes, and finally apparently that just about every journalist in the world should be executed for disagreeing with him.

In an interview with Iran’s Press TV (an Iranian station the purpose of which is to broadcast anti-semitism to the English-speaking world) in 2014 Barrett also suggested that Israel may have been behind the much-discussed disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, explaining that “Christopher Bollyn just found that there is an identical twin of this plane. It has been sitting in a hangar in Tel Aviv, Israel, for the past couple of months […] Speculation is that there was some sort of false-flag plan afoot, perhaps another planes-into-buildings deception like 9/11. We have so many parallels between this event and 9/11.” In the interview he also suggested that British banker Jacob Rothschild was behind the plane’s disappearance.

And yes, the Anti-Defamation League specifically citesBarrett as one of the leading promoters of anti-Semitic 9/11 conspiracy theories.

His attempt to run for Congress in 2008 got him 2.3% of the vote in the general elections (but 59% in the libertarian primaries), and did at least receive the endorsement of 9/11 activists like Robert M. Bowman, Carol Brouillet, David Ray Griffin, and Kevin Ryan. He has later suggested taking up arms against the US government.

Diagnosis: It’s an interesting case, really. Barrett’s commitment to conspiracy theories and his persecution complex seem to feed a sense of grandeur, which again feeds into his conspiracy theories and persecution complex. Critical thinking does not enter into the process at any stage, of course. Sometimes it also looks as if he actually thinks anyone is taking him seriously.

At Baseline of Health® Foundation and Baseline Nutritionals you will be able to purchase “nutritional” products, including “health drinks”, herbal tinctures and a detox program, created by Jon Barron. Barron claims to have discovered “a revolutionary herbal manufacturing breakthrough that makes herbal tinctures 100–200% stronger than previous extraction techniques,” though won’t, of course, reveal the secret method he uses to produce them – this is marketing, not research – but asserts that it involves a paradigm shift, scalar energy, healing energy frequencies, and Kirlian photography. He named his discovery after himself: the Barron Effect®.

Some of his discoveries are covered in his book Lessons from the Miracle Doctors, and Barron is on the Medical Advisory Board of the Health Sciences Institute, which is devoted to “the most urgent advances in modern underground medicine,” i.e. the kind of medicine that Big Pharma won’t recognize because they couldn't ... possibly make any profit on it? Oh, those mean scientists and their rigor! They have failed to endorse Barron’s observations that cancer cells “are almost without exception, low voltage cells,” that low voltages are the cause of cancer, and that reenergizing them (whatever that means) can thus stop cancer. It would probably take someone who knows anything about the field a book to unravel and disentangle the misunderstandings and stupidity that go into a single sentence of Barron’s description.

Barron also offers vaccine advice. Vaccines are unsafe, says Barron, because they are poisoning our children with mercury, even though they don’t contain mercury. Though Barron has no expertise in any relevant fields, he has products; for autism, he wants to chelate the mercury (which isn’t there, and wouldn’t have been the cause of autism in any case) out of you. Which is, needless to say, not a very good idea.

Diagnosis: Apparently something of an Andrew Weil wannabe. Impact unclear, but whatever it is, it sure isn’t good.

A.k.a. “Rescuer”

Jay “Rescuer” Bartlett is a member of the deliverance ministry movement, and maintains the website MinisteringDeliverance.com.

Among his main target groups are people who clearly suffer from mental illnesses, whom Bartlett can convince are in need exorcisms (rather than professional help); that is, Bartlett does apply terminology associated with dissociative identity disorder, but interprets these in light of the Bible and claims that “broken pieces can be demonized and locked up by the enemy” and can also “possess animal spirits” (for references, go here). That’s the framework for some very strange, and very scary ideas and actions.

Bartlett has, according to himself, met people who have cursed objects “within their body nature” due to the workings of Satanic cults (“this ancient practice of infusing individuals with cursed objects is becoming more common in recent years;” decline of America, remember). In an exorcism he apparently performed on a woman who “possessed, within her body nature, two literal animals – parts of animals that the cult spiritually surgically placed within her belly. One was a part of a lizard, it’s tail, scales, and fragements of it's skin. These pieces of the lizard were cursed and placed inside of her. There was another animal part within her also, a rabbit's foot, that had been cursed and placed within her stomach area.” Yes, he is talking about objects being literally implanted in people’s bodies, albeit through magical means: “The animals were literal animal parts – I even saw them being expelled out via the mouth.” he says. Objects he has allegedly removed during spiritual surgery include a small motor, a fetus, detection devices, and live “demon-animal hybrids.”

Apparently he is currently being threatened and followed by cults, drug cartels and pornography rings for sharing this information. His bizarre involvement with someone named “Tina” is described here, and may be of interest to the authorities.

Diagnosis: Needs help. Quickly.

Shiva Barton is an ND. Indeed, Barton was the 2011 “Physician of the Year” of the American Associationof Naturopathic Physicians (AANP). Of course, Barton is not a physician under any reasonable definition. But he sure is into all things woo and shiny and pseudoscience.

Barton is, for instance, a big fan of homeopathy, despite the fact that homeopathy demonstrably has no beneficial health effects. Now, Barton is, indeed, very unhappy about how homeopathy is used by most naturopaths, and how it is taught at cargo cult universities specializing in pseudoscience such as Bastyr University, but hardly for the right reasons. The problem, according to Barton, is that it’s too complicated. That’s right. Bastyr’s curriculum on homeopathy is too difficult for students (in the above-linked article he mentions in particular his discussions with a newly educated ND, Laura Chan, who raised the complaint – note that name as someone you’d want to avoid at all costs if you have health issues), and Barton’s solution is simple: “throw out the homeo philosophy books (really!) and stick to the basics: match the remedy to the person with the symptoms.” But then, I suppose, since homeopathy is targeted at the patient’s “vital force” in any case, it doesn’t really matter. Barton’s advice is, indeed, and if taken literally and in isolation, sound. Unfortunately, what Barton is driving at is surely not anywhere close to being reasonably.

Despite his lack of legitimate credentials and total absence of any insight into or understanding of science, medicine, or reality, Barton has also received some attention through the PBS show “Curious George”. In a section of the show, the featured kids visited Barton, who taught them that oregano cures infections, about various pressure points that correspond to energy lines, and that taping magnets to these points is really effective (transcript here).

Diagnosis: Utterly deluded pseudo-scientist who thinks he is helping people. Which is profoundly sad.

Ellen Bass

Ellen Bass is a poet who suddenly achieved tremendous success with the self-help book The Courage to Heal: A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse in 1988, coauthored with Laura Davis, which has sold over a million copies and been translated into several languages. Yes, recovery from child sexual abuse is a serious topic. Unfortunately, Bass and Davis – neither of whom have any expertise in any relevant topic (they are poets and creative writing teachers) though they do still view themselves as experts – ain’t helping.

Laura Davis

The authors claim that individuals (mainly women) with a general set of symptoms are assumed to have been abused, but that the memories have been repressed – in reality there is little to no evidence for the claim that memories of childhood sexual abuse are unconsciously repressed. And in response, they propose a variety of techniques to overcome these symptoms, including confronting their alleged abusers, adopting an identity as a “survivor”, overcoming the associated trauma and in cases where there is no memory of any abuse, recovering the memories. In reality (again), there is no evidence that recovering repressed memories of abuse leads to improvement in psychological health – indeed, the evidence strongly suggests the exact opposite. There is a significant amount of other scientific errors in the book as well (that have not been corrected in subsequent editions).

The techniques are, however, an excellent means for constructing false memories of abuse in children, and Bass & Davis are to a large extent responsible for creating an industry which has isolated and separated family members despite having no positive evidence that the abuse actually occurred, and for destructively replacing individual identities with that of a “survivor” (though the fact that the book caught on is to a large extent due to the number of sheerly incompetent therapists out there – indeed, Paul R. McHugh, professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins and an expert in the field of memory describes the book as the “bible of incompetent therapists”).

It’s rather obvious that no good can come from this particular type of bullshit, and Bass and Davis are morally responsible for ruining many people’s lives – a report for the Australian branch of the False Memory SyndromeFoundation found the book was linked to nearly 50% of the cases in which a false allegation of child sexual abuse was made based on recovered memories.

The book has been deemed “the most harmful work of slander, ignorance, and lies since The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”; aptly so, since its techniques are the same – appeals to suspicion, conspiracy, and paranoia by teaching women to blame all problems on repressed memories of abuse, “thereby triggering an epidemic of false accusations and shattered lives, this time aimed at mothers, fathers, brothers, uncles, and grandparents instead of Jews or ‘witches’.”

Of course, Bass & Davis are not alone. Similar ideas have been espoused in the works of self-proclaimed experts like Beverly Engel, E. Sue Blume, Wendy Maltz, Beverly Holman, and Mary Jan Williams, for instance. It is also notable that some of the case studies in their book were taken from now discredited reports of Satanic ritual abuse such as the autobiography Michelle Remembers by Michelle Smith.

Diagnosis: Rubbish, and Bass and Davis have the dubious honor of probably being among the pseudoscientists who have managed to cause the most amount of harm over the last decades. Horrible, horrible people.

Apparently Robert W. Bass enjoys a Ph.D. Mathematics from Johns Hopkins University. Those are credentials that could, apparently, usefully be lent to any kind of pseudoscience to add a fake sheen of respectability. And apparently that’s what Bass uses his degree for. Indeed, Bass used to be a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University, but the days when he would be involved in anything resembling science are apparently long gone.

Currently Bass is a fan of Velikovsky’s egregious bullshit, and involved in the Velikovsky cargo cult producing “research” carried out in the Velikovskian tradition. Bass is even on the staff of Kronos, the infamous journal of all things Velikovsky.

The sorts of dispositions and judgment failures that lead you to Velikovsky are of course excellent crank magnets, so Bass has been observed for instance attending seminars on cold fusion as well. (Here is his own summary for the Infinite Energy Magazine, which is hardly a scientific publication; his summary isn’t … critical, to put it mildly – though when you read sections like the one starting with “one of my life’s greatest regrets”, one wonders whether he is just fooling around). He is also a creationist of sorts; he is a signatory to the Discovery Instititute’s feeble petition A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism, and has called Stephen Meyer’s book The Signature in the Cell the “most important book in two centuries.” It … isn’t, of course, but for people like Bass, with an agenda but no competence, one can perhaps understand why it would seem that way.

Oh, and Bass is also a signatory to Rethinking AIDS, a list of HIV “skeptics”.

Diagnosis: Not the loudest voice of pseudoscience or bullshit on the Internet, Bass’s credentials would nevertheless be used to lend credibility to a range of stupid. As such, his work and legacy cannot be said to be particularly beneficial to the human project.

Ed note: Robert Bass passed away in 2013.

We have to include a short entry on this one. Joe Bast is the founder of the Heartland Institute which in many ways is environmental science’s Discovery Institute. The Heartland Institute is one of the primary promoters of climate change denialism in the US, and funds other deniers, anti-scientists and pseudoscientists, including “independent” deniers such as Anthony Watts.

Their strategy regarding climate change are based on the two related tactics of i) sowing doubt, and ii) trying to discredit the science. To the latter probably belongs their infamous 2012 billboard campaign, and the accompanying press release stating that “[s]cientific, political, and public support for the theory of man-made global warming is collapsing. Most scientists [yeah, right] and 60 percent of the general public (in the U.S.) do not believe man-made global warming is a problem. The people who still believe in man-made global warming are mostly on the radical fringe of society. This is why the most prominent advocates of global warming aren’t scientists. They are murderers, tyrants, and madmen.” (Since the lies were so baldfaced the campaign did backfire a bit.)

In 2012 some of their budget documents were leaked. Though more cunningly devised than the DiscoTute’s Wedge Document, it still reveals their anti-science campaign with little ambiguity (for instance the decision to invest at least $100,000 in 2012 to produce and distribute a curriculum laying out their climate change denial message constructed by David Wojick, who has no relevant scientific background, with the purpose of sowing doubt), and efforts to sow doubt among the public and politicians. The document is described here.

As Bast himself described it in an interview: “We’ve won the public opinion debate, and we’ve won the political debate as well. But the scientific debate is a source of enormous frustration.” Part of their campaign to sow doubt is their support for the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), a small group of skeptics who have set themselves up as a counterweight to the IPCC by ignoring the evidence and concocting a story of how rising carbon dioxide concentrations are entirely beneficial. Bast himself actually acknowledges hand-picking data to support his position – he just tries to argue that scientists on the other side do the same thing when they are building a case for global warming (he probably doesn’t really believe that, but it works with the public). He has also said it is only natural that a libertarian like him would decide to question the scientific foundation for climate change – which is a pretty clear admission that whether something is accepted as evidence depends on whether it supports his political views rather than vice versa. The delusional part of it is the common opinion among victims of the Dunning-Kruger effect that science works that way, too.

Diagnosis: Cynical opportunist more than anything, but there is little doubt that Bast’s political commitments have led him deeply into anti-science, lunacy and conspiracy theories – whatever is needed, really, to bolster the political views he has arrived at for independent reasons.

Doug Batchelor is a Seventh-day Adventist and the author of several books. His primary ministry is Amazing Facts, a worldwide television, radio, and publishing ministry, which should be read with an emphasis on “Amazing”, not “facts” (his “amazing facts” stand to “facts” as “toy horse” stands to “toy”). Batchelor is, for instance, a typical young earth creationist. Though he rejects evolution because it conflicts with a literal reading of the Bible, he also thinks evolution can be refuted on scientific grounds, and you can probably already suspect what sorts of PRATTs he’ll offer us (there’s a good discussion here). According to Batchelor, Darwin deliberately invented evolution to promote atheism, and atheism leads to eugenics and racism and the Holocaust and to the rejection of morality, Hitler (never mind that Hitler most likely rejected evolution, but you see: Batchelor’s claim is an Amazing Fact™, not a fact), as well as the end of all hope.

Apart from that objection, Batchelor maintains that carbon dating is untrustworthy since “14C has a half-life of 5,700 years,” which means that it cannot establish the age of anything older than that, according to Batchelor (also this). Everything is uncertain, and all of evolution is based on such tenuous assumptions (no, he doesn’t understand that the central point of science is that hypotheses are tested, or that hypotheses about the past predict observations at present). Therefore, evolution requires more faith than creation. Also, there have been proposed fossils that have turned out to be fraud, which shows that evolutionists falsify the fossil record for financial gain, and which means that the whole fossil record can be rejected out of hand.

No. Instead of listening to those who know anything about the field, Batchelor praises the “science” performed by RATE, a group that, according to Batchelor, has been “ignored or censored by evolutionists” (oh yes, they have been mostly ignored; to Batchelor “censored” is a synonym for “ignored” when it suits him). Indeed, anyone who questions modern scientific conclusions are “persecuted”, according to Batchelor. Just watch Expelled, I suppose.

“I still love science”, says Batchelor, but rejects it because it conflicts with the Bible.

Currently he runs his own educational institution, Amazing Facts Center of Evangelism, which surely doesn’t brainwash kids with the truth and which does allow dissent, only not from the strict religious creed of the school, of course.

Now, rejecting science is just a small part of what Batchelor’s ministry is all about. Here are his musings on the role of women in ministry and in leadership (surprise: Batchelor is against women in leading positions: it “often comes with bad results, as was the case with Queen Jezebel, who usurped her husband’s authority”), but I think we have provided a fair and representative picture.

Diagnosis: Rabid, hateful (yes, hateful) fundamentalist. And he does seem to be rather influential.

#1339: Ron Baity

#1340: Steve Baldwin

#1341: Timothy Ballard

#1342: David Balsiger

#1343: Matthew Baral

#1344: Clarence Barinowski

#1345: Toni Bark

#1346: Ralph Barker

#1347: Carol Barnes

#1348: Hank Barnes

#1349: Tommy & Matthew Barnett

#1350: Carla Baron

#1351: Kevin Barrett

#1352: Jon Barron

#1353: Jay Bartlett

#1354: Shiva Barton

#1355: Ellen Bass & Laura Davis

#1356: Robert W. Bass

#1357: Joe Bast

#1358: Doug Batchelor